A real need has emerged, notably in the means that can be developed for retranscribing authenticity or traceability in the field of olfactory marks, of the development of packages, or even in the dietary field.
In effect, it can be particularly advantageous to link a color or a set of colors to an odor or to an aroma, the visual data being less complex and more easy to recognize. This type of correlation can be applicable in all fields of business in which there is a need to transcribe, objectively, an odorous mixture into a set of objective parameters, notably into objective colorimetric data and vice-versa.
Currently, this assignment is done in a human manner. Expert judges are asked to make a sensory evaluation to produce colored odor profiles, that is to say assign a color or a plurality of colors to an odor.
This solution is unsatisfactory because of the difficulty in training the judges and of the time-consuming and costly nature of this type of measurement. Furthermore, because of the hedonic valency of the odors, this type of recognition method entails many tests, and the panel of judges needs to be very large to limit the variability and obtain reliable results. This solution does not make it possible to accurately describe an odor by means of a set of colors or to assign a color, even a panel of colors, to a new odor which has not been previously tested by the judges. In other words, a colored profile cannot be assigned to a new odor without it being done by a panel of judges, which as has previously been stated, is time-consuming because of the need to train the judges and to involve a panel of judges which is large enough to obtain a chromatic profile which is as objective as possible. Finally, it is not possible, via this method, to perform the reverse step which is to assign an odor or an aroma to a panel of colors.
The problem that the invention sets out to resolve is to propose a method that makes it possible to objectively assign a chromatic profile to any odorous mixture (and vice-versa) that makes it possible to obviate all or some of the drawbacks listed previously.